John Jonas manages Filipino remote workers and found that directness works better than hierarchy. Americans' blunt honesty initially shocks Filipinos used to avoiding conflict, but kindness and respect draw out honest communication and better performance than the bowing-down culture of local Filipino bosses.
Chapters
It's easier to work for you than it is for a local boss where they have to bow down and they have to do all this weird stuff. Over the years, I've had a lot of conversations with people in the Philippines about how Americans are abrasive. We're upfront. We're brutally honest. We don't mince words. There's this initial culture shock when they start working for you. Filipinos, typically, they are not upfront. They're not confrontational. They don't want to bring it out because their culture is, "Oh, you have to be friendly and don't offend someone." When you go in into this, you know, okay, like this is how they're going to behave. I need to do things to draw it out of them. And if I can be kind to them and treat them well, then they're probably going to really, really want to work with me because there's no ego stroking there. They don't have to code their messages and they know that you're not going to code yours. And once they realize that, then they really do just want to do a good job for you because it's easier to work for you than it is for a local boss where they have to bow down and they have to do all this weird stuff. Well, it's not weird to them. It's weird to us.
